[Note: This app is current only available to Level I] I'm not a sports person myself, but recently when on a trip to New York City, I was fascinated by the American sports channels. Stats, stats everywhere.
It does add to the sport-watching experience for me though. Having stats on every single thing makes it more engaging for me, and I immediately start thinking of ways on how performance could be improved.
Being aware of your performance stats in CFA exams are also important to passing them, and if you're looking for a friendly neighborhood computer to do all the number crunching for you, take BenchPrep's practice exams for a spin.
It does add to the sport-watching experience for me though. Having stats on every single thing makes it more engaging for me, and I immediately start thinking of ways on how performance could be improved.
Being aware of your performance stats in CFA exams are also important to passing them, and if you're looking for a friendly neighborhood computer to do all the number crunching for you, take BenchPrep's practice exams for a spin.
Who Are BenchPrep?
BenchPrep is a platform provider of study materials. They work with a wide range of top-tier publishers such as McGraw Hill, Princeton Review, Wiley, Cengage Learning, and O’Reilly. All their offerings are available online, on Android and iOS (iPod, iPhone and iPad). Courses they offer besides the CFA courses include GRE, GMAT, LSAT and SAT, ACT and AP.
For their CFA offering, they've partnered with Finsage Review, an approved exams provider by the CFA Institute. Finsage was founded and managed by Ray Sant, a PhD in Finance and a CFA charterholder. Besides a long and active career in teaching, Ray was also SVP in Kaplan Schweser.
BenchPrep & Finsage offer 2 CFA products for Level I: the CFA Level I Prep Course, and the CFA Level I Practice Exams. In this post we will review the Practice Exams - the review for the Prep Course has been covered previously.
A Word on Our Reviews.
Reviews help candidates. We realize a good part about giving good advice on the CFA exams is to make sure candidates have the right material. To that end, we are constantly on the lookout to test prep providers and post our reviews for our readers to reference before making a decision to purchase.
They also sometimes help us. We also sometimes use affiliate links on 300 Hours. If you use our links to buy these materials, we get a little cash to keep the lights on around here. You get reviews, and sometimes discounts if we can manage them.
Reviews will always be no-bullshit. However, no matter who or what we partner, our promise to you, reader, is this: We will always honestly review materials, and if we do not think a product is worth recommending, we will either post the honest review anyway, or decline to post the review.
If you have any feedback on this, let us know at team@300hours.com. Now onwards to the review!
Good Practice, Great Reporting
The interface, feel and look of the apps provided by BenchPrep across all mobile platforms have already been covered in our previous review of their study notes, so we'll focus on content here.
Question quality and difficulty is pretty good. The Ethics stuff is actually pretty high standard and similar to the kind you'll expect to get from CFA Institute. Overall there is a good mix of easy and difficult, so in general I'd rate the difficulty a 'medium'.
A great practice partner. As we've covered many times before, practice is the key element to passing CFA. For the most part CFA material is not difficult to understand. It's making sure you remember everything, and get used to applying it in exam format that will make or break your mark.
This is doubly true in Level I where candidates are less familiar with the exam format and the pressures of time. For example:
With BenchPrep's timing feature it's quite easy to measure your timing per question, and if you're lagging behind, which topics are screwing you up.
The reporting on this is pretty slick. When reviewing BenchPrep's CFA Level I practice exams app, the feeling I got when watching American televised sports came back. Stats, stats everywhere.
BenchPrep is a platform provider of study materials. They work with a wide range of top-tier publishers such as McGraw Hill, Princeton Review, Wiley, Cengage Learning, and O’Reilly. All their offerings are available online, on Android and iOS (iPod, iPhone and iPad). Courses they offer besides the CFA courses include GRE, GMAT, LSAT and SAT, ACT and AP.
For their CFA offering, they've partnered with Finsage Review, an approved exams provider by the CFA Institute. Finsage was founded and managed by Ray Sant, a PhD in Finance and a CFA charterholder. Besides a long and active career in teaching, Ray was also SVP in Kaplan Schweser.
BenchPrep & Finsage offer 2 CFA products for Level I: the CFA Level I Prep Course, and the CFA Level I Practice Exams. In this post we will review the Practice Exams - the review for the Prep Course has been covered previously.
A Word on Our Reviews.
Reviews help candidates. We realize a good part about giving good advice on the CFA exams is to make sure candidates have the right material. To that end, we are constantly on the lookout to test prep providers and post our reviews for our readers to reference before making a decision to purchase.
They also sometimes help us. We also sometimes use affiliate links on 300 Hours. If you use our links to buy these materials, we get a little cash to keep the lights on around here. You get reviews, and sometimes discounts if we can manage them.
Reviews will always be no-bullshit. However, no matter who or what we partner, our promise to you, reader, is this: We will always honestly review materials, and if we do not think a product is worth recommending, we will either post the honest review anyway, or decline to post the review.
If you have any feedback on this, let us know at team@300hours.com. Now onwards to the review!
Good Practice, Great Reporting
The interface, feel and look of the apps provided by BenchPrep across all mobile platforms have already been covered in our previous review of their study notes, so we'll focus on content here.
Question quality and difficulty is pretty good. The Ethics stuff is actually pretty high standard and similar to the kind you'll expect to get from CFA Institute. Overall there is a good mix of easy and difficult, so in general I'd rate the difficulty a 'medium'.
A great practice partner. As we've covered many times before, practice is the key element to passing CFA. For the most part CFA material is not difficult to understand. It's making sure you remember everything, and get used to applying it in exam format that will make or break your mark.
This is doubly true in Level I where candidates are less familiar with the exam format and the pressures of time. For example:
- Knowing how long you take for each question is important. You're only allowed an average of 90 seconds per question in the Level I exam.
- Knowing which topic areas f**k you up is important too. Read our topics analysis on Level I 2012 to find out which topics gave past candidates issues in the exam.
With BenchPrep's timing feature it's quite easy to measure your timing per question, and if you're lagging behind, which topics are screwing you up.
The reporting on this is pretty slick. When reviewing BenchPrep's CFA Level I practice exams app, the feeling I got when watching American televised sports came back. Stats, stats everywhere.
 Question & answer explanation on Ethics |  Time to answer for each question is timed and categorized by wrong/right answers and topics |  Your score is also compared and evaluated by topic |
What you get. The product includes, according to their wording:
Important: although the label says '6 practice exams', what BenchPrep means by 'an exam' is a set of 120 questions. Hence '6 practice exams' in this context means the equivalent of 3 AM sessions and 3 PM sessions, i.e. 3 full-length exam experiences.
Availability and sync across platforms is the same as before, so having this to cram in some questions while on the commute or right before bedtime will give you an extra edge.
BenchPrep's additional features add to the effectiveness. As per the Study Notes set of apps, features such as marking confidence levels, scrap paper function, notes and bookmarks all apply.
Is it worth buying? At $150, probably not, but at $35 it definitely is worth getting. Good CFA practice exams are not cheap. And if you've done enough of them, as we have, you'd understand why: they're usually very well designed, carefully thought out, and need to be updated every year.
A set of 3 full practice exams cost about $150 from standard providers, and BenchPrep is no exception. Their app for 3 AM sessions and 3 PM sessions cost $149.99.
But only for normal people. We've managed to get BenchPrep to give a 80+% discount to our readers.
So you'll get it for just $35.
As we've mentioned before, to properly prepare for each level we recommend at least 6-7 practice exams per level, so this already provides you half the practice you need for Level I.
Not only that, the $35 offer extends beyond just CFA practice exams. You can also get the Study Prep Course for $35 (originally $200), or any of the other GRE, GMAT, LSAT and SAT, ACT and AP courses on offer at BenchPrep!
To get this awesome price, click on the button below and select 'Finsage CFA Practice Exams' at the dropdown menu.
- 720 questions
- 6 practice exams
Important: although the label says '6 practice exams', what BenchPrep means by 'an exam' is a set of 120 questions. Hence '6 practice exams' in this context means the equivalent of 3 AM sessions and 3 PM sessions, i.e. 3 full-length exam experiences.
Availability and sync across platforms is the same as before, so having this to cram in some questions while on the commute or right before bedtime will give you an extra edge.
BenchPrep's additional features add to the effectiveness. As per the Study Notes set of apps, features such as marking confidence levels, scrap paper function, notes and bookmarks all apply.
Is it worth buying? At $150, probably not, but at $35 it definitely is worth getting. Good CFA practice exams are not cheap. And if you've done enough of them, as we have, you'd understand why: they're usually very well designed, carefully thought out, and need to be updated every year.
A set of 3 full practice exams cost about $150 from standard providers, and BenchPrep is no exception. Their app for 3 AM sessions and 3 PM sessions cost $149.99.
But only for normal people. We've managed to get BenchPrep to give a 80+% discount to our readers.
So you'll get it for just $35.
As we've mentioned before, to properly prepare for each level we recommend at least 6-7 practice exams per level, so this already provides you half the practice you need for Level I.
Not only that, the $35 offer extends beyond just CFA practice exams. You can also get the Study Prep Course for $35 (originally $200), or any of the other GRE, GMAT, LSAT and SAT, ACT and AP courses on offer at BenchPrep!
To get this awesome price, click on the button below and select 'Finsage CFA Practice Exams' at the dropdown menu.
We've also reviewed the BenchPrep CFA level I Study Notes & Prep Course. Do you prep for CFA with the help of mobile platforms such as BenchPrep? Let us know in the comments below!
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